Con Report

Apologies in advance for the Emma-sensei indulgent inclusion of giant pictures.

This was the second anime convention I've been to, so now I can generalise that they are fun. I was remarkably social (for me) and met some nice people including Alison who knows Evan and thus Simon, and entirely independently knows me because I used to work with her mum. She was very amazed by this, and by the fact that so many of us knew each other from Townsville.

Right, first of all: loot. I bought a "lot" of stuff, but that's because I haven't been to Sydney for ages. I'm well overdue for a trip to Kinokuniya to buy an embarrassing amount of anime/manga/merchandise. Hopefully Xopher, Emma-sensei and I will be heading out to Sydney in the next few weeks for a weekend of shopping and hangin' out.


Starting in the top left corner: Two pencil boards (a bit like mouse pads) from the anime Bleach: the white and blue one is Ishida, the president of the sewing club, and all-round very odd young man. His love interest/rival is beside him: the orange haired boy is Ichigo, the star of the show and part time shinigami.

Across the top are the three issue of Bronze (in Chinese) that I bought in the auction after being totally egged on by two yaoi fans behind me. Yaoi is Japanese explicit homosexual anime/manga/whatever. It's pronounced "yowie" which caused the expected "I thought you were talking about the chocolate bunyip" comments from the peanut gallery. There's also another Chinese yaoi manga up there, but at least I had some reason to buy that one (more on that later).

In front of them are two shirts: the big yellow and red G from Gatchaman (not G-Force which is the Americanised and lame version) and some kitty witch thing from .Hack Sign. The Gatchaman shirt was because they're a ninja science team, and that's so cool. The kitty witch shirt was because Alison talked the Madman guy into swapping it for a packet of gum. Alison has mad trading skillz. I was going to give him the gum, but she was going to sell him gum for a dollar a stick. Since the shirts were $5, he was kind of getting a bargain...? I'm not sure how it happened, but I think I should try to do more shopping with Alison around.

Between them is a kitty badge, but there's a better picture of it below.

The black shirt on the far left is from the Sydney Uni Anime Club and has a bunch of cute faces with manga expressions. Below that is a very amusing bumper sticker "My other car is a 60 foot transforming robot" which I'm still hoping to convince Chris to put on his car.

There's a stack of other stickers, two badges and tote bag, also from Sydney Uni's anime club. Man, package deals? They so saw me coming.

Standing between them and the Gatchaman shirt is Envy - but more on him later.

Another pencil board, this one with three of the Sins - Envy, Lust and Gluttony - from Fullmetal Alchemist (FMA). Bless.

Also from FMA, the figure of Alphonse Elric is standing on OzTaku, an amateur Australian manga magazine. I bought the first issue last year at this con, so felt kind of obliged to support them again. Damn, Australian fan art is just so very lame... Sorry, but yeah. Ganbatte, ne.

The white tshirt in the bottom right is from Raxephon which is yes, another giant robot anime. Hard to resist a $5 shirt.

Another Chinese manga (sigh) and then a Japanese boy love manga! Whoot! It's actually called Beautiful Boy Love, and it's the manga of a movie I have about beautiful Japanese boys who work as "hosts" in Hong Kong. Since the manga has furigana (which make it easier to read), there's a good chance I'll be able to work out the whole thing. My reading is getting much better lately. It's still amazing how much improvement I can see in my own reading... I love being able to pick up a manga in Japanese and actually fucking read it. So cool.

Anyway, I had to buy the other two Chinese manga to get this Japanese one. Actually I had to buy four, and four Bronzes, but after rather harshly outbidding a vociferously-disappointed 13-year-old girl, I ended up selling her two of them for $5. I really enjoyed the auction, and would have spent even more money if there had been more cool stuff for sale. I later ended up chatting with the woman who sold these Chinese manga, and she is also cool and interesting and has my email address.

Next to them is the character book from Yami no Matsuei which is all in Japanese and was probably overpriced, but YnM 0wnz my ass.


And standing on that is Hughes from FMA. And here's a better picture of the three FMA figures. Check out the detail. I love how Hughes has his throwing knife behind his back (and there's probably another knife in the hand that's in his pocket). Japanese anime figures are so gorgeous, and incredibly detailed. You should be able to see that there's a tattoo on the back of Envy's thigh. Envy's the androgynous one (eep), in the skirt (eep), with the bare legs and the halter top (omfg)... The suit of armour is Alphonse, and he's from a different release of figures, and thus is probably not quite big enough to be in scale with the rest of them, but he's close enough.


Here are all my FMA figures that are at this scale (yes, I have more than this, shutup). Izumi is the woman crouching in the martial arts pose. I love her purple sandals and dreads. I could blither for (further) ages, but my fingers are getting sore!

Almost done: a close up of the Kuroneko-sama (Lord Black Cat) badge from the anime Trigun, and a little round ball thingy of Saizou the angry pig from the anime Peacemaker Kurogane. Kuroneko-sama came in a Trigun two pack with a badge of Vash the blond and ditzy gunslinger, but I gave Vash to my friend Anne who came along for the whole day to the convention. It was lovely to have her there and she was very patient with my habit of dashing off to start conversations with interesting looking people or have yet another look at the same vendor stands that I'd already looked at twice. Simon and Chris were very good value too: amazingly willing to carry my stuff and generally supportive and cool. I had a posse, yo. 8)

I spent a lot more time with people than last year, and can present the following tips:
1. Wear something interesting, because that will give people a chance to open a conversation with you.
2. It only takes thirty seconds or so to realise that you don't actually want to be talking to someone (or they don't want to be talking to you), so what the hell, give it a try. It's only thirty seconds.
3. At 33, I finally have enough poise to decide when I want out of a conversation, and get out of it.
4. Despite above mentioned aura-of-calm, I can still get a little het up and shouty if other people are heckling too. (Must work on this.)
5. Finding other women interested in yaoi is very neat, especially when they blush adorably or filthy-giggle when you talk about blow jobs in public.

Speaking of yaoi, there was also a yaoi panel which was very interesting - it was all about female sexuality and expressing desire and why it's so very hard to admit things like, "I think Envy is incredibly hot" in public. But that might be a blog for another day, perhaps.